Hello, currently fitting out our motor cruiser for living aboard/extended cruising. While I have tried to minimise the paperwork, there are some documents you have to carry. Does anyone have an easy, compact system for storing and retrieving papers?

We are in the process of moving aboard as well. We are scanning documents we might need - old statements, tax forms, etc. The plan is to keep on hand ID and boat documents. Everything else should end up in cyberland.

Digitizing everything is the first step. After that sort everything critically and eliminate everything that isn't really critical.

The few things that you have to have I recommend to all my clients to vaccume seal them. I like foodsavers, but the model isn't critical. Vaccume sealing is far preferable to normal filing since it's waterproof, and in most cases laminating destroys the legal value of the documents.

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Greg

- If animals weren't meant to be eaten then they wouldn't be made of food.

Annie-
If you are just talking about "vital papers" for yourselves and the boat, remember that you can also scan them and simply email copies to yourself. Most email accounts these days can hold a large amount of data literally forever, and then all you need is a way to log on to the account in order to download and print (or forward) copies whenever you need to. In fact, you can always open a dedicated free account for just that purpose.